To put it in perspective, last year's greenest team according to this metric --- total career touches by the top QB, top RB, two top RBs, and top TE --- was the San Francisco 49ers. Smith, Gore, Bryant, Battle, and Johnson had 766 touches going into last season. The next greenest was the Raiders with 847, followed by the Browns with 1165.

The Vikings could conceivably be as low as 200 if you call Shiancoe the tight end or if one of the rookies beats out Williamson or Wade. Even if you use Chester Taylor instead of Peterson as the running back and/or Bollinger at quarterback, it's probably going to be under 1300. Two questions:

1. How does this rank historically?

2. Is there any precedent of such a young team scoring points and/or winning games?

Second question first: not much. But optimistic Viking fans can point with hope toward the 2001 Seattle Seahawks, who added rookie receiver Koren Robinson to second-year players Shaun Alexander (who played very little as a rookie) and Darrell Jackson and first-year starter Matt Hasselbeck at quarterback. Christian Fauria was the tight end. This group had only 307 touches prior to that season, but the offense was competent and the team finished 9-7.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 3:20 am and is filed under General.
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My most significant memory of this sort of thing was the 1995 Vikings, the year after Terry Allen left. It was said that they were the only team in the league that didn't have a 1,000-yard running back -- for his career.

That team went 8-8, with three running backs seeing significant time. Fortunately, Warren Moon made up for it, with 4200 yards and 33 TDs. Of course, every QB in that division not named Trent Dilfer put up ridiculous numbers that year.